I have long admired and valued James Fallows’s work, and so I write the following with respect and some reluctance. Mr. Fallows interviewed me over the summer for his article “Declaring Victory” (September Atlantic). We had a long discussion, and I provided him with a copy of a piece I had written giving an assessment of the war on terror after five years, based on what I believe al-Qaeda’s current perspective is likely to be.

Mr. Fallows refers to that piece in his article, and the quotes he provides from it are rendered accurately. I would like to note for the record, however, that what I wrote in my assessment in no way supports Mr. Fallows’s conclusion that “We Win.” The entire thrust of the piece I wrote leads to a conclusion that is 180 degrees opposite of Mr. Fallows’s—in essence, “We’re losing.”

With respect for Mr. Fallows and all of the experts he interviewed, I would submit that a better title for Mr. Fallows’s article would have been “Whistling Past the Graveyard.”

Michael F. Scheuer Falls Church, Va.

While most of James Fallows’s article makes sense, I believe he is mistaken when he states that “loose nukes” are “the one true existential threat to the United States.” A reasonably well-coordinated nonnuclear attack by terrorists on this country’s transportation system is feasible and would have devastating effects—subjecting millions to potential starvation, for instance. Or again, our limited number of remaining petroleum refineries constitute a target set that is vulnerable to rather crude, easily delivered nonnuclear weapons. Protecting refineries from this threat is probably impossible, and such an attack would severely damage our consumer economy. We could expect to be returned to approximately the economic level of 1910.

James Wooster Lake Tapps, Wash.

James Fallows makes two related arguments. First, that Americans have less to fear today from a terrorist attack than we did in September 2001; second, that our government’s response to such actions poses a greater risk to our nation than the attacks themselves. In light of recent events in London, his first proposition is getting more attention. But the truth of Mr. Fallows’s second point does not depend on the truth of the first; and it is the more important of the two. Why is it that we, the United States of America, persist in responding to terrorist attacks with behaviors that so obviously do not favor our survival? How have we, as a free citizenry, become so easy to manipulate into patriotic foolhardiness? And how has military action become America’s first resort, instead of our last?

One possibility is that military fool‑ hardiness is an unexpected consequence of the all-volunteer military. As our domestic economy has hollowed out, there are now fewer opportunities for making an honest living. A young American can now aspire to careers in symbol manipulation (finance, marketing, computer programming, or online poker), but rarely in manufacturing or family farming. The U.S. military—our uniformed services and our weapons industries—is the employer of choice for a growing percentage of our wage earners. Thus, we are naturally less inclined to welcome criticism or doubts about its centrality to our culture. And with no one serving against his or her will, the natural gung-ho spirit of the career military has no offsetting cynicism from the unwilling grunts and their families.

John S. Detwiler Pittsburgh, Pa.

James Fallows demonstrates the need for caution in characterizing major events and historical eras. By declaring, repeatedly, that the United States is engaged in a “war on terror,” politicians and pundits have entrenched the concept deep in the national psyche. Like the terms Kleenex and Post-it, the phrase has been “sold” as an unquestioned, official state of being.

To uproot this mind-set—that is, to convince the citizenry that the war is over and that we have won—we would need a flexible, reflective, informed audience. Five years of war-talk saturation and conditioning have probably not prepared the American public for substantive change. Ordinary folks have become mentally comfortable in the familiar Cold War rut of angst and fear.

This situation requires a persuasive, credible, informed, and intelligent person who, by example, summons trust and commitment. Few leaders match that profile today. But then I remembered An Inconvenient Truth, and Al Gore. Is that also Fallows’s thought?

Frances Monteverde Austin, Texas

James Fallows is undoubtedly correct that the U.S. could move beyond the war-on-terror mind-set by declaring victory and putting the threat of terrorism in perspective. But this is not going to happen, at least not in the next two years. The Bush administration learned right after 9/11 how easily it could use fear to manipulate the public. It’s not going to forgo a strategy that it hopes will ensure political victory in 2006 and 2008. Instead of saying that “we could use a leader to help us understand victory and its consequences,” Fallows should have focused on how the leaders we have will continue to do just the opposite.

Ralph H. Brock Lubbock, Texas

James Fallows replies:

I like and respect Michael Scheuer, and his standing to speak in this field is unquestioned. As mentioned in my article, he was for years the head of the CIA’s (now-abandoned) anti–bin Laden unit, and his books Through Our Enemies’ EyesandImperial Hubris have stood up well. Of course I cannot tell him what he really thinks, but I believe that the full analysis presented in my article is not so totally at odds with what Mr. Scheuer has written and said.

As a reminder, my chain of reasoning for “declaring victory” was this:

“Al-Qaeda Central” itself, the organization run by Osama bin Laden and responsible for the 9/11 attacks, has been seriously harassed and interfered with in the years since then. This reduces the risk of a devastating, large-scale assault that would amount to “another 9/11.” The airline-bombing plot foiled by the British this summer actually illustrates this change. Whether or not the cell that planned the attack was directly related to al-Qaeda, British police knew about their operations for months and could disrupt them when they chose.

Around the world, “copycat” or “self-starter” groups inspired or motivated by al-Qaeda will continue to pose a serious risk, as has already been demonstrated in England, Spain, India, and elsewhere. But—as events in those same countries show—the groups do not pose an “existential” threat to those societies. Nor will they to the United States, even if and when they succeed in carrying out an attack here. Indeed in the long run the greatest menace of their terrorism is in provoking societies to destructive overreactions (for instance, the United States being provoked by 9/11 to invade Iraq, which by all accounts has become the major training ground and rallying point for anti-U.S. extremists).

Therefore the best defense against the ongoing threat from such groups is to deny them sources of support; to carefully judge our response to provocations; and to emphasize the tools of intelligence, surveillance, and penetration that have historically proven most effective against them. The first area is where, as Mr. Scheuer says, the United States is most clearly losing,” by alienating Muslims worldwide and jeopardizing its moral standing. Many of its mistakes come from excesses made more likely by the state of war (for instance, Guantánamo detentions, perceived as an us-or-them showdown between the United States and the Islamic world). But in all areas, the concept of an open-ended war on terrorism” has outlasted its usefulness, for reasons elaborated in the article. The U.K. bombing plot, again, was broken by patient surveillance work, not by speeches about making war on Islamic fascism.

Mr. Scheuer might still challenge this formulation. But it shows how recognition of failure in one area, and recognition of ongoing threat, can be reconciled with declaring a successful end to the original war against Al-Qaeda Central itself.

I agree with James Wooster that nonnuclear attacks could make life difficult in America. In his excellent Global Guerrillas blog, John Robb (whom I mentioned in the article) has written extensively about the way such “system disruptions” allow small, weak groups to damage big, powerful targets. This underscores the importance of maintaining the right efforts to penetrate, destroy, and deter such groups.

I also agree with John Detwiler that reliance on an all-volunteer military has been a crucial part of the political calculus of this war. Those Americans in uniform, whether on active duty or in the Reserves or National Guard, have been called on for extraordinary sacrifice over the last five years. But they represent well under 3 percent of the total U.S. population. The rest of us have not even had to pay higher taxes for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or the larger war on terror. Practically speaking, there is no chance of restoring a military draft. But its absence obviously makes it politically easier to go to war.

As for Ralph Brock’s point, over the last five years I have done all I could to examine the way the leaders we have” made the choices they made. And to Frances Monteverde I say: the imagined presidential oration that closed the article was meant to set a general standard rather than identify a particular candidate. But if I’d had any real-world figure in mind, it would have been Dwight Eisenhower.

Picturing Tibet

I strongly protest the caption accompanying your Photo Op (“Go West, Young Han,” September Atlantic). The new Tibet railroad is indeed an “engineering marvel,” but at the same time a moral disaster. I have seen this railroad during its construction phase, but I have also seen the plight of the Tibetan people, who suffer under the yoke of the Chinese oppressors and who are largely denied the opportunity to benefit from this engineering marvel.

China brutally invaded Tibet and subjugated the Tibetans. The Chinese ransacked monasteries and destroyed untold volumes of Buddhist literature, sacred scriptures, and religious objects—all under the guise of “liberating” the Tibetans, but with the real intent of destroying the ancient Tibetan culture and religion. Having failed at this, they now plan to overwhelm the native society with Han immigrants, effectively perpetuating the servile status of the Tibetans. The new railroad will facilitate this strategy, and it will also allow the Chinese to mine the region’s rich material deposits and transport them to the east, again without benefiting the Tibetans.

Paul W. Rosenberger Manhattan Beach, Calif.

Camelot Revisited

Whatever his changes of view on other matters, concerning moderately left-of-center politicians in Britain and the United States Christopher Hitchens has been consistent. To him, they are all contemptible. For example, Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot, Bill Clinton, and John F. Kennedy have all gotten the back of his hand—in Kennedy’s case (“Feckless Youth,” September Atlantic), several times. Toward conservative politicians—Dwight Eisenhower for one, Hitchens is frequently more indulgent, giving them credit for what he considers their morally correct actions and setting aside any actions that don’t conform with the picture of conservative wisdom he is trying to paint.

Readers of Hitchens’s article who were not alive and sentient in the United States in the early ’60s would not have the faintest inkling that John Kennedy was, in the context of his times, a liberal president. He supported breaking the House Rules Committee’s power to block legislation. He supported federal aid to education, Medicare, and a tax cut (then supported by Keynesian liberals). He was late to civil rights, but his Justice Department, staffed with young liberals, did integrate the University of Mississippi, and he also came to support and publicly endorse civil-rights legislation far more extensive than anything Ike would have endorsed, and it was enacted after his death. He and his activist brother, Robert, came to be hated by many white southerners for these words and actions, and some southerners cheered his death. He pushed through the Test Ban Treaty. He started the Peace Corps and through his eloquence and undoubted charisma inspired a generation to enter public service (Hitchens might talk to people like Gary Hart, Chris Dodd, or John Kerry, or any one of the thousands of living Peace Corps alumni, about this quality). Perhaps they were all deluded. If so, the delusion had positive results. His views changed and matured. He was a better president in 1963 than in 1961. The jury is still out on what he would have done in Vietnam and about other matters. However, the liberal evolution of his brothers Robert and Edward after his death may give some indication of where he was headed.

Kennedy deserves the criticism he has received since his death about his sexual recklessness, his Cuba policy, his inflexible attitude toward the Cold War (though that too was arguably changing in 1963), and much else, which stern historians and freelance moralists now delight in cataloging. But any reasoned assessment of him should also take into account the actions and qualities that plunged most of the nation and the world into sincere mourning after his death in November 1963.

Peter Connolly Washington, D.C.

It’s Getting Hot in Here …

I’m glad Gregg Easterbrook has finally joined the fight against global warming (“Some Convenient Truths,” September Atlantic). But his message would have more credibility if he admitted to his long-standing role in worsening the problem he now decries.

“The only reason runaway global warming seems unstoppable is that we have not yet tried to stop it,” he writes. But a big part of why the United States has waited so long to take action against global warming is that many of its citizens, government officials, and business leaders were convinced over the past fifteen years, by Easterbrook and others, that the scientific case for global warming was at best uncertain and at worst a fantasy promoted by environmentalist Chicken Littles.

It’s nice that Easterbrook has finally seen the light, and I hope he’s right that we can reduce global warming faster and more economically than commonly expected. But our task is much, much harder because we waited these additional fifteen years to get started. If Easterbrook wants to be heard now, he should own up to how he helped get us into this mess. Otherwise, he risks looking less like an optimist than an opportunist.

Mark Hertsgaard San Francisco, Calif.

No one can seriously argue that the Earth is not warming. Yet Gregg Easterbrook joins the growing number of “catastrophards” who choose to forget what is known from history. According to a chart published by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, the Earth was warmer than it is now for a period of 300 years during medieval times. At the time of the Magna Carta, 1215, the growing season in England was three weeks longer than it is today, and there was viticulture as far north as Ely. At the same time on southern and southwestern Greenland, crops were grown in sufficient quantity to support a population of about 2,000. Greenland was called “green” because that is what it was.

What caused this warm period? It certainly was not human activity. The catastrophards owe us an explanation as to why today’s picture is different from the Medieval Warm Period, and why it is other than a normal fluctuation of climate, the kind of fluctuation that has previously occurred.

Eugene J. Meyung Charlottesville, Va.

Gregg Easterbrook ignores the basic science in his assurances that global-warming problems are easily solved. Carbon dioxide—the main greenhouse gas—is fundamentally different from the sulfur and nitrogen pollutants causing smog and acid rain. For smog and acid rain, promising directions in which to look for fixes were obvious, whereas for carbon dioxide, no such promising direction is known. Carbon-based fuels can only produce energy by creating carbon dioxide. No carbon dioxide, no energy!

John C. Miller Professor Emeritus, Mathematics CUNY City College New York, N.Y.

Gregg Easterbrook replies:

Mr. Meyung is right that the Earth has warmed and cooled many times in the past, for reasons not understood. It’s also true that many diseases of the past were caused by natural forces poorly understood, but we don’t say, Therefore we should not fear new diseases today.” Human activity is placing into the air large amounts of heat-trapping gases, and nearly all science academies have in recent years concluded that the current observed climate change is caused by those emissions. The science academies could be wrong, but it is prudent to work from the assumption that they are right.

I caution Professor Miller that I did not suppose global-warming problems are “easily” solved—rather, that solutions may prove less expensive than assumed. In the 1960s, it was said that auto engines simply could not function without expelling smog-forming compounds. Now we know they can, and the control technologies required are affordable. Today engineers don’t know how to build engines or power plants that burn fossil fuels without expelling carbon dioxide. If society creates a profit incentive to discover solutions, we may be pleasantly surprised.

As for Mr. Hertsgaard, I have never written anything suggesting that global warming might be “a fantasy promoted by environmentalist Chicken Littles.” My 1995 book on environmental policy, A Moment on the Earth, devoted a chapter to weighing the arguments of global- warming believers and naysayers, supposed it was impossible to know which side was right, and concluded, “Any reasonable policy that reduces the odds of climate change is more than worth the price.” Fifteen years ago, a thoughtful person looking at global-warming studies might have focused on the uncertainty; at that time the National Academy of Sciences itself emphasized uncertainty. Today a thoughtful person who looks at recent science, including recent National Academy of Sciences statements, must deduce there is a danger. Mr. Hertsgaard’s own work on this subject labors to divide the world into Sinister Conspirators twirling their mustaches and Noble Crusaders crying atop parapets; perhaps Mr. Hertsgaard has trouble grasping that someone can be skeptical, then be gradually persuaded by the evidence.

The Height of Inequality

It will be hard to forget the image, created by Jan Pen and recreated by Clive Crook in “The Height of Inequality” (September Atlantic), of the long parade of tiny low-income workers followed by a few mega-rich giants. Still, I have to point out that this is at its heart just a trick of statistics: Pen is juxtaposing one variable—height—which exhibits a tight variance (its graph would look a lot like the standard “bell curve” distribution of, say, SAT scores, and the numerical average would be about the same as the median), with another variable—income—which has large variance. You could get the same effect using many variables other than income. Imagine, for instance, that the parade walkers’ heights were based on number of lifetime sexual partners (Wilt Chamberlain would be quite a bit taller than even he actually was), or the number of hours each walker has spent piloting small aircraft.

The interesting question is whether a highly skewed distribution of income matters. I happen to think it does, but Crook doesn’t even get to the issue except with the throwaway “How much longer before the dwarves get restless?” line at the end of the article. Some would respond that income distribution has always been skewed, from the time most people were peasants and a few were dukes and kings; moreover, if you arranged this parade at any time in history until very recently, 90 percent or more of the marchers would be fending off their families’ starvation, whereas today you wouldn’t have to get too far into the parade, in the United States at least, to find that most marchers own television sets and air conditioners and are battling obesity instead of starvation. The question, then, is: If the lowest- income workers have been elevated to a certain level, does it matter (beyond some primitive, envy-based response) how big the people at the other end of the parade grow?

To ask the question this way is to answer it, at least for now. Despite historical progress, the first 50 million or so American marchers don’t yet even have health insurance; some percentage of the marchers are still underfed and ill-housed, as are their children. The image of the parade is an argument for redistributive taxation and other economic policies. Only after all of the marchers are provided with some reasonably humane minimum should a few of the marchers be permitted to grow grotesquely tall.

Andrew Stumpff-Kane East Lansing, Mich.

The Hive

Marshall Poe’s illuminating article on the history of Wikipedia (“The Hive,” September Atlantic) includes a few problems: one of style, one of fact, and (possibly) one of judgment. First, although he explains the origin of many words unfamiliar to the nonspecialized reader, such as Wiki, mud, and gnu, he uses slashdotting without providing the origin of this term, which refers to sudden influxes of new Web-site visitors. (The technology-news Web site www.slashdot.org routinely posts articles about other Web sites and links to them; then when thousands of slashdot readers simultaneously try to link to the subject of the latest article, they sometimes cause the linked site to slow considerably or even crash.) Also, in Poe’s outline of the history of multi-user dungeons, two of the three examples he cites are not multiple-user programs. (Zork and Myst are single-player games, though a sequel to Myst did briefly exist in a multi-user form.)

Finally, Mr. Poe’s admission that he created an article about himself is likely to raise the eyebrows of Wikipedia users, as Wikipedia guidelines frown on this: the Wikipedia:Autobiography article tells would-be contributors, “Creating or editing an article about yourself is strongly discouraged.” Since Mr. Poe says that he has been interested in Wikipedia for about two years, I can only assume that he wrote his essay to inspire discussion, debate, and further research, as any well-written Wikipedia article should, and I applaud his sly experiment in provoking Wikipedian-type behavior in the readers of TheAtlantic.

Kate Foster Chicago, Ill.

Marshall Poe responds:

Kate Foster is correct: Mist, not the more-famous Myst, was one of the first MUDs, and the original Zork was not a MUD, as it was a single-player game. The first MUD, however, was essentially a multiplayer version of Zork called (appropriately enough) “MUD.” As for my “sly experiment,” Ms. Foster gives me too much credit. When I added the “Marshall Poe” entry, I didn’t know I was running afoul of the rules. I just wanted to see what would happen, and what happened persuaded me to look further into Wikipedia itself.

Upstairs, Downstairs

While we appreciate Sheelah Kolhatkhar’s description of Pinnacle‑ Care services (“Inside the Billionaire Service Industry,” September Atlantic), we must clarify that PinnacleCare advocates are professionals, many with graduate degrees and all with many years of health-care experience. In fact, one of the two advocates Ms. Kolhatkar interviewed received her bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University, her M.B.A. from the international business school INSEAD, and another master’s degree from the Health Advocacy Master’s Program at Sarah Lawrence College. The other advocate Ms. Kolhatkar met has been in the health-care field for twenty years and, among her many achievements, has developed innovative, award-winning disease-management programs.

The fact that most of our advocates are women does not mean that they are “motherly” (though compassion is a strong suit), that they “coo” (though they are persuasive and diplomatic with surgeons and hospital administrators alike), or that they extend their “claws” (though they are fiercely dedicated to getting the right health care for our members). The article’s accolades were wonderful, but—as our members would agree—our advocates deserve substantially more respect.

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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today.

— Deuteronomy 15: 12–15

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation.

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

MANCHESTER, Mich.—Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

Most of the big names in futurism are men. What does that mean for the direction we’re all headed?

In the future, everyone’s going to have a robot assistant. That’s the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. They’re calling it Moneypenny—the secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bond’s womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

Why can’t people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, here’s a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. That’s a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

An attack on an American-funded military group epitomizes the Obama Administration’s logistical and strategic failures in the war-torn country.

Last week, the U.S. finally received some good news in Syria:.After months of prevarication, Turkey announced that the American military could launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria from its base in Incirlik. The development signaled that Turkey, a regional power, had at last agreed to join the fight against ISIS.

The announcement provided a dose of optimism in a conflict that has, in the last four years, killed over 200,000 and displaced millions more. Days later, however, the positive momentum screeched to a halt. Earlier this week, fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group aligned with al-Qaeda, reportedly captured the commander of Division 30, a Syrian militia that receives U.S. funding and logistical support, in the countryside north of Aleppo. On Friday, the offensive escalated: Al-Nusra fighters attacked Division 30 headquarters, killing five and capturing others. According to Agence France Presse, the purpose of the attack was to obtain sophisticated weapons provided by the Americans.

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. TheWall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

Members of Colombia's younger generation say they “will not torture for tradition.”

MEDELLÍN, Colombia—On a scorching Saturday in February, hundreds of young men and women in Medellín stripped down to their swimsuit bottoms, slathered themselves in black and red paint, and sprawled out on the hot cement in Los Deseos Park in the north of the city. From my vantage point on the roof of a nearby building, the crowd of seminude protesters formed the shape of a bleeding bull—a vivid statement against the centuries-old culture of bullfighting in Colombia.

It wasn’t long ago that Colombia was among the world’s most important countries for bullfighting, due to the quality of its bulls and its large number of matadors. In his 1989 book Colombia: Tierra de Toros (“Colombia: Land of Bulls”), Alberto Lopera chronicled the maturation of the sport that Spanish conquistadors had introduced to South America in the 16th century, from its days as an unorganized brouhaha of bulls and booze in colonial plazas to a more traditional Spanish-style spectacle whose fans filled bullfighting rings across the country.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”